Family Members

What are your dreams for your child? If you’re a parent, grandparent, or other caring adult who is raising a girl or young woman, chances are you often find yourself thinking about her future. How will the choices she makes now impact her future? Will her career provide financial security? We know it may seem that your child is influenced by everyone but you. But parents and family are a profound influence in their child’s life. And when it comes to careers, experts tell us that parents and family matter the most.

Of course, you want to guide your child into a future filled with success and happiness. But that could involve everything from helping her to do well in school to introducing her to a whole range of career opportunities — even when you may not be aware of all the options yourself! So where do you begin? What steps can you take to educate yourself while guiding your child in the right direction?

The two of you can sit down and check out Career Girls’ high-quality, no-cost resources available right here. We think you'll agree: the inspiring role models you'll meet will fire up your daughter's imagination about what her future can be. Best of all? Career Girls is ad-free — creating a distraction-free space to make the most of your time together.

With more than 500 role models working in hundreds of different careers, you may be wondering how to get started. There is lots to explore, and no one right way to use Career Girls. But a great place to begin is with the Empowerment Lessons.

Using the Empowerment Lessons

Career Girls has developed a special series of videos and educational resources that are just right for supporting parents in raising empowered and independent daughters. The Career-Based Empowerment Lessons are centered around career exploration, and the Skill-Based Empowerment Lessons focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) with key topics such as teamwork, confidence, communication, leadership, financial literacy, and the importance of integrity. Each have been designed to help your daughter build lifelong success while she is still in middle- or high school.

Each lesson centers around a short video clip that features real-world role models who share straight-to-the-point career insights and advice. These videos are paired with ready-to-use educational resources that build on the most important concepts.

Download the Corresponding Resources. Each Empowerment Lesson has a corresponding set of resources accessible on each video page (see example) and can also be accessed individually through the Resources module at the bottom of this page. Download and print the PDFs you'd like to use.

View the Video with Your Daughter. It may be helpful to preview the video first, noting information that might be particularly relevant to your daughter or vocabulary you might want to review. For example, with “Be Confident,” discuss what confidence means: Is confidence something you get all at once or something that builds? What are some things you feel confident about? How did you develop confidence in this area? What would you like to feel more confident about?

Use the corresponding resources to take the learning further:

Independent Learning Guide: (see example) This guide is designed to engage girls in digging deeper into concepts introduced in the videos. Your daughter might complete this guide on her own, but you'll find that it's also a great tool for sparking meaningful conversations that can have a lasting impact.

Classroom Lesson Plan: (see example) While designed for school settings, you may find this resource helpful for taking an in-depth look topics that you think have particular relevance.

Fun Page Activity: (see example) Guide your daughter in completing this fun activity to further connect what she learned in the video to her own life.

Use the "Positively Empowered!" Certificate. Goal-setting is an important part of mentoring, and this certificate provides an easy and concrete way to help girls set personal goals for developing the skills and knowledge they need to go after their dreams — and track their progress.

Using the Career Exploration Tools

Along with ready-to-use Empowerment Lessons, Career Girls offers built-in career exploration tools to engage girls in expanding career awareness, imagining what's possible, and taking important steps to plan for their futures.

The free Career Quiz is a fun place to start. This quick and easy quiz helps girls discover careers that may be a match for their skills and interests, with links to role models who can help them learn more. Girls who are natural problem-solvers, for example, can meet Makeda Keegan, an IT Systems Manager. Makeda encourages girls not to be afraid of software and coding. More important than being good at math, she explains, is being "curious, enthusiastic, and thorough."

Make sure your daughter is aware of our Student Resources. The printable resources promote independence, providing tools your daughter can use to track careers she explores and connect those careers to her own interests and goals. Be sure to check out the free motivational posters (see example). These colorful posters share powerful advice from real-life role models to help your daughter develop the stick-to-itiveness she needs to go after her dreams.

Does your daughter dream of being an astronaut? How about a social media director or a surgeon? Maybe she wonders what it would be like to be a computer scientist, a conductor, or a car designer. Career Girls role models will help your child discover a world of possibilities.

Use Our Parents and Family Member Resources

Use the Resources module below to find these additional parents and family member resources: